The ex-Vividlily 'Clockwork Orange' 7A38-7020 re-surfaces !

[Seiko7A38]

Readers may recall a thread in the eBay section of the old forum dating back to January 2016, about a certain very distinctive stainless 7A38-7020 with a garish, but skillfully re-painted lurid orange dial. Here's a link to the archive:

Clockwork Orange - 7A38-7020 Technicolor dial - Hurts my eyes

It begins:

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It was listed by a dishonest US eBay seller, vividlily (who has since changed their user ID), that imports large volumes of over-polished watches, including vintage Rolex and Omega, with re-painted dials from India. Their spurious activities (and my in-depth investigation into the company) were documented further down the first page of that thread.

This was the first time I'd seen them list a Seiko 7A38. Consensus was that the dial had been very skillfully re-painted.

After numerous re-listings, the watch eventually evidently sold for the $999 asking price at the end of March 2016:

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I must admit it had occasionally crossed my mind since, sometimes wondering who might have inadvertently bought it.

[Seiko7A38]

That said, I hadn't actively searched for it. This morning, I stumbled across it, purely by accident. I was planning to do some work on a couple of Racer J39026-70 BreitBling clones. I'd come across a thread on the Spanish watch forum Relojes-Especiales.com, where another owner had started a thread about his example. We'd also exchanged a few PM's. So before starting work, I went back to re-read them.

I don't regularly frequent that forum, but whenever I sign in there, I run a quick search on 'Racer' and '7A38' to see if anything of interest has been posted since my last visit. Their Vintage WRUW thread from Sunday 11th April returned a few results, so I thought I'd have quick scroll through it. The first 7A38 I came across was this very nice example of a stainless 7A38-7020, posted by miguelfr, which I'd seen before.

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There are a couple of other 7A38's further down the first page of that thread, but nothing remarkable, so I flicked over to page 2, where scrolling down I found this post by miguelfr, which I've used google to translate.

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I'm almost certain it's the same watch, although Miguel appears to have toned down the over-polished bezel and fitted a plain flat crystal - the Vividlily 'Clockwork Orange' had a crystal with a polished bevel edge.

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I've since replied to the Relojes-Especiales thread (at the bottom of page 4) and exchanged a few pleasant PM's with Miguel. He confirmed my suspicions about it being the same watch and also that he'd done some work on it, including replacing the crystal.

That was the first time he'd ever posted a photo of it, so not a bad spot, even if I was a few days late to the party.

[Seiko7A38]

In fact, Miguel's just kindly PM'd me this side-by-side shot of his two 7A38-7020's: A minter and 'Clockwork Orange'.

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